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Monday, June 29, 2015

`His Cackleophilous Concubines'

My
youngest son has a video of me carrying on an extended conversation with a
rooster. The bird was strutting behind a fence on the grounds of a nearby grade
school, the one he (my son, that is) had attended years before. I
cock-a-doodle-doo’ed, the bird, after hustling his hens into the coop, answered
in kind, and we carried on a call-and-response for ten minutes or so, until the
rest of the (human) family was fed up with the Dr. Doolittle routine. I do the same
with squirrels, cats, dogs and several species of birds. Dogs are particularly
responsive. The neighbors have a Dachshund that barks with a precisely
enunciated “Ruff, ruff,” like a cartoon dog. My accent when barking with him is
good, better than my French. I enjoy the illusory sense of intimacy with
another species and the total ridiculousness of the whole thing, similar to
many conversations with my fellow humans, though I don’t fall for any of that “horse
whisperer” crap. In his review of a book titled The Animal Dialogues, Eric Ormsby writes:

“Conversations
with wild animals are always one-sided. If we speak to them, we hear how empty
our words sound in the silence between us. If we manage to make eye contact
with some startled deer in a forest clearing or with a caged lion in the local
zoo, we search their faces for visual clues, but we can't quite decipher the
look they give us back. We depend almost exclusively on our eyes, but animals
apprehend us with all their senses. They know us by our smells and sounds as
well as by sight; the lion may even anticipate the way we taste. For all our
wordiness, we are mute in this wordless realm.”

Note that
Ormsby specifies “wild” animals, leaving open the possibility that two-way
conversations with domesticated creatures are possible. My cat is not shy about
expressing his preferences and aversions. He is laconic, never verbose (expect
when purring), and has little use for small talk. Language for him is largely
utilitarian, but never less than elegant and eloquent, accompanied as it is by
rubbing, paw-kneading and head butting, a uniquely feline mingling of speech and dance. Ormsby’s
poems, like Marianne Moore’s, are densely populated with animals, and roosters seem
to be among his favorites. In “Watchdog and Rooster,” he contrasts the
communication styles of the titular beasts:

“The
rooster, however,
accustomed to the chuckling palaver
of his cackleophilous concubines,
disliked the stolid silence of the dog
who hunched there like a stinkpot on a log
and only uttered small, obsequious whines
about his master's boots at supper-time.”

“I like the way his stubby
little beak
Produces that dark, corroded croak
Like a grudging nail tugged out of stubborn wood:
No `cock-a-doodle-doo’ but awk-a-awk!
He yawps whenever he's in the mood
And the thirst and clutch of life are in his squawk.”